Tomahawk, WI 01/16/2014 (BasicsMedia) –Leading software and technology giant Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) reached an agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday pertaining to in-app purchases by children that caused expensive bills for parents, to the tune of $32.5 million.

The FTC lawsuit and its causes

The FTC consented to withdraw its lawsuit against Apple in exchange for the $32.5 million in refunds to affected customers of the in-app purchases. This ends a major lawsuit over the vintage bellwether that gave us the iPads and iPhones, which has been on since early 2011 when the FTC started receiving a plethora of complaints from consumers.

And while the $32.5 million is insignificant in front of Apple’s mammoth $148.6 billion it raked in from sales revenue in just one quarter, Apple has come under considerable market pressure and competition mostly from current rival, Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android, which has seen its market share race past Apple’s.

Apple iOS’s ongoing war with Google’s Android and now Chrome OS

Although Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) continued to sell record volumes of iOS operating system-based worldwide favorites – the iPads, iPods and iPhones – in recent quarters, Google’s Android has captured the lion’s share of the market that Apple had a few years ago with the iPhone’s advent. Though figures vary with sources, Android’s market share in the mobile markets considered for the third quarter of 2013 stayed safely above 74%, while Apple’s market share hovered just over 12%.

Google has invariably dented and continues to eclipse Apple’s market share after struggling for many years to capture Apple’s then largest archrival Microsoft’s market share. This may not sound remotely surprising, but as the history of these three companies – Microsoft, Google and Apple – would have it, Google’s strategies and products have been centered around capturing the lion’s share owned by Microsoft.

During the 1980s when Google was nowhere on the horizon, Apple’s Macintosh operating system competed directly with Microsoft’s DOS and Windows to become the dominant player. Microsoft devoured Apple’s then market share with more open technology. Google surfaced in the late 1990s as a distributed model services business with volume-driven revenue, and while Apple continued to covet premium customer segments, Microsoft, ironically, became the major loser with its late debut in the mobile technology segments.

Apple’s overall future from its product line

Undeniably, Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), with its vintage, remains a dominant leader in technology with unfazed profitability, especially after the iPhone revolutionized the mobile industry. While it is difficult to say that Apple will be left behind, Google has gained tremendous worldwide prominence and sales, albeit at lower costs. Time will tell which of these two behemoths will win the technology war.

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Sally Murdock is a former newspaper section editor and reporter and is now contributing at UStrademedia. Her work has been published in national business trade magazines, and can be found on wire services, in daily newspapers, in university alumni magazines, on the web, in newsletters, and more.